28): Rey's Training
by Order and Chaos - Qui Iudicant
Summary: In search for Luke Skywalker, Rey finds more than she bargained with. For the Master proves to be a far cry from what the legends and her own misconceptions painted him as. Meanwhile, incensed with the loss of valuable Imperial infrastructure, Supreme Leader Snoke tasks the hot-blooded Darth Caedus to retrieve her at all costs, in seeming defiance of reality.


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Reality distorted and space bulged—a needle emerged, resolving in an instant as a recognizable starship. The tunnel of hyperspace vanished just as quickly, returning local space to quiescence, and the _Falcon_ continued under sublight power. The light of a distant star played across its upper hull, to be quickly eclipsed by the shadow of a large moon as the ship banked into a long descent toward the planet below. Thick clouds covered its surface, making identification of its surface hard.

Saucer-shaped, twin-pronged, and offset portside cockpit, little had changed about the ship since its earliest days with a few notable exceptions—two massive backward sweeping wings almost thrice its length stretched outward from the former escape pods. Two powerful plasma thrusters had been added at the join between these new wings and the dorsal hull, adding a distinctive greenish hue to the normal blue of the ion drive. Thicker armor plating covered the whole ship, making it look as if it had grown scar tissue to cover horrific wounds, and two heavy turbolaser turrets rose like half triangles from the top and bottom. To complete the look, the prongs' center had been filled in for extra living space and an extended missile launcher array.

Inside the cockpit, nerves atremble with trepidation, Rey adjusted some switches. Her eyes never once left the numerous readouts that lit up everywhere. A nonspacer would have had little clue as to what half of them meant, let alone the technical knowhow to understand _what_ they meant. Yet she knew them at a mere glance. Over there was the fuel gauge, full from a recent glide over a Jovian five hyperjumps back. To her right was the shield status display (green), the subspace radio (off), and the acceleration compensator display (nominal). There was the hyperdrive control panel (spooling down) and the comlink (open). She had worked with them intimately for these past three months since she departed the Resistance base at D'Qar, searching for the mythical planet of Jedi, where Luke Skywalker was rumored to be in hiding. Unfortunately, her leads had all played out. Jedha remained in ruins from the First Civil War and Ossus was a radioactive hellscape. Coruscant's temple had been sacked since the Fall of the First Empire and Tython was forever barred by turbulent hyperspace storms in the depths of the Core.

That had left only two leads—Ahch-To and Solitude. The former she had scoured thoroughly for most of her absence. First she had flown the _Falcon_ many times over, scanning the planet's surface ceaselessly. This had proven to be ultimately futile, as the majority of the planet was covered in endless ocean. Only one major landmass, stuck off to the northeastern hemisphere, held any significant technological evidence for civilization. The numerous tiny islands were either storm-ravaged or frequently submerged for parts of the year—there were no dwellings on them. The landmass, nicknamed the "Temple island", was actually a series of islands dotted together in a vast archipelago and featured diverse climes and biomes. The so-called temple there was a ruin, its libraries empty and no evidence of any offworlders. The small village of Lanai nearby had been less than helpful, and it was with sinking spirits that Rey had departed for her final lead.

Grunting caught her attention and Rey looked up to see the furred face of Chewbacca looking at her with concern etched in his eyes. She smiled and said "Relax, Chewie, I'm fine."

He grunted again, a series of short chirps issuing forth, and gestured to the cockpit's entrance.

"Thank you, but no, we're close, and I don't want to rest."

Another whine. He reminded her that orbital descents took a little over two hours and longer in unfamiliar atmospheres, and that she had had no sleep since Ahch-To, which was almost two days ago. Inattentiveness was disastrous.

"Oh, well, I guess you're right." She stood, slowly, and stretched. Her bones popped after being hunched over for so long. Each crackle and shift sent waves of release through her body, her muscles unknitting. "Oh, by the spirits of the Force," she swore. "I guess you really are right."

Chewbacca huffed with laughter.

Rey smiled ruefully and stepped out of the cockpit. The Wookiee took his seat in the co-pilot's chair, adjusted some controls before the warning light came on, then settled back for a long vigil. Rey meanwhile entered the lounge. Over in the corner the holoboard winked, still activated. BB-8 was apparently teaching the little droid they had found stranded on Ahch-To, D-O, how to play. Rey idly wondered how long Chewbacca had endured watching two robots pit their mechanical wits against each other, and if the only reason he had come to relieve her was to give himself something to do.

She passed them and moved toward the bow of the ship. The galley was deserted, but there was some food newly prepared. She took it and retreated to one of the bunk rooms. There she sat down and prepared to rest. Sleep did not come to her. Instead she stayed seated, eating her food slowly. Feeling reinvigorated she reached out and plucked her lightsaber from where it lay.

Despite its great age, almost sixty years old, Anakin's lightsaber was as pristine as it was when it had been first constructed. Rey had studied many texts and tomes Master Zamboshi had lent her in the hopes it would help in locating the Jedi world, and had learnt much about lightsaber construction, about the mysterious living Kyber crystals, and their connection with the Force. Supposedly these crystals were manifestations of the Force made solid, or midichlorians turned to crystal upon death. She hoped to make her own lightsaber under Skywalker's guidance.

Rey turned it over in her hands, feeling its many protrusions, and tried to picture herself in that time when the Jedi Order had existed. All of the myths and legends of her childhood were physical reality for others, like Leia. She wondered what it was like to have met a real Jedi—those mysterious robed warrior-monks of incredible power and yet with little need to draw their weapon, preferring calm wisdom over brute force. No wonder the Old Republic had lasted for as long as it had, not with these guardians watching over it eternally.

Sleep not coming for her, she took the weapon and a helmet and strode out to the lounge. The two droids were still at their game, most of the pieces still in their starting places. Rey paid them no mind, and instead reached over and plucked out a smaller training droid from its socket in the wall. She clicked it on and retreated to the center of the room. She eyed the droid as it rotated, getting its bearings. Then the lights came and, and the characteristic hissing of its repulsors activated. It shot up in the air and started hovering about her. Rey put on her helmet and switched her blade on.

D-O squeaked with fear as a shimmering pillar of aquamarine with scintillating highlights running up and down its length speared forth, while BB-8 chirped reassuringly. Rey took up a defensive stance, angling herself towards the training droid. Slowly but surely the bout began—Rey gradually began to sink into an unconscious state as she released her physical senses, and soon the comforting cloak that was the Force enveloped her.

The training droid fired, rising and shifting to the right, letting off shots here and there. Rey anticipated them, first by hearing, and then by sensation alone as the perturbations of each laser blast reached her. Anakin's blade danced in a deadly ballet, leaving behind sparkling afterimages as each low-powered bolt was absorbed into the weapon. She gradually forgot her exhaustion and let herself become fully immersed in the ritual.

Maggie Zamboshi, the venerable matriarch of the Zamboshi clan from Dexemia, had been impressed with her natural aptitude with the blade. She had advised the girl to seek out Master Luke, telling her that only he could instruct her in the Jedi arts more completely than her, as he had been trained personally by the greatest Masters of the Old Republic, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda the Ancient. General Leia had been in agreement, adding that they needed Luke more than ever to face the First Order.

In the meantime Rey had studied all that she could, suckling up knowledge greedily like it was water—for water it was, as she had lived in a desert all her life, ignorant and unknowing of the wider universe about her, concerned only about her next meal and paying her keeper, Plutt. Then the stormtrooper had landed, and her world was changed forever. Through a series of misadventures she had ended up on D'Qar and was given this quest. A quest that was proving to be frustrating.

The droid fired again, and she caught the blast on the backswing. The bolt hit the droid and it fell to the floor, defeated and deactivated.

Rey pulled off her helmet, amazed that it was slick with sweat. She didn't know how much she would exert herself. And, in a moment where she almost lost her balance, also hadn't realized how exhausted she had become. Nonetheless, satisfied that her exercise had done its job, she went and re-entered the cockpit to check on the progress. Chewbacca huffed a greeting as she tiredly took her seat. "If you don't mind I'll rest here for a while," she said.

Before them loomed the mist-shrouded world of Solitude, and it was aptly named for apart from its twin satellites and star there were no other nearby bodies save for a single lone Jovian far in the outer system. Storms covered this side of the planet's hemisphere, lightning flashes illuminating great portions of the surface below. Rey hoped that was over ocean and not land. She wouldn't want to land during a storm. The color was a dark blue-white, half covered by darkness where the planet's moons cast deep shadows. The planet grew larger as they made their descent, and soon the horizon filled the whole viewport as the _Falcon_ angled to match the planet's orientation. Then the peacefulness of space vanished as the stormy atmosphere enveloped them. The viewport grew red from the heat of their passage which soon dissipated as the ship gradually slowed down to cruising speeds.

Before long they had broken through the cloud cover and emerged into a fantastic landscape. Snow-covered mountains stretched for kilometers in every direction, the green valleys few and far between. Frozen rivers snaked their way far below between these mountains, through vast forests of blue-green, and across plains of snow. Here and there lay a village—mute evidence of intelligent life—the white rooftops wreathed by smoke, the inhabitants waiting out the storms. And what a storm it was—sleet and hail rained down with incredible ferocity, impacting the surface with a thousand thousand craters, and the _Falcon_'s shields glowed with an imperceptible bluish tint as this onslaught bounced off. The lightnings here were not just confined to the oceans, great bolts of light blasted across the sky, the starship jockeying to avoid impact. Every so often this didn't work as a lightning bolt struck the _Falcon_ directly, the shields flaring up as gigawatt strengths blared across the readouts, to immediately cool down as the danger passed.

_Where will we set down?_ Rey wondered, letting Chewie do his thing at the pilot's station. This question was not left unanswered for long, as Chewie soon turned the ship in a wide bank towards a particular mountain, its great bulk dominating the landscape such that its peak could not be seen for the clouds. The starship descended lower to the ground, passing over the forests and disturbing their icy repose. Some trees snapped in half from the force of the _Falcon_'s passage. Gradually a village came into clear focus. Twelve buildings, some larger than others, their windows shuttered against the wind. No one stirred as the starship settled down in a clear field to the south of the village.

"Good work, Chewie." Rey peered through the gloom. It was clear that even though it was "daytime" the cloud cover had ensured it was effectively night. She couldn't even see the village if it were not for the _Falcon_'s lamps shining upon them, or the distant flashes of lightning. "How'd you know where to land?"

Chewbacca made a series of huffs and low moans.

"You just knew?" Rey rolled her eyes. "C'mon, Chewie, there's a whole planet here. How do you expect to find Luke on the ground? We didn't even do a scan yet."

More moaning.

"Oh, so there is technology here. Someone signaled you, didn't they. Where did it come from?"

Chewbacca pointed.

"The village?"

That was a negative.

"The mountain?" Rey guessed.

The Wookiee nodded.

"Well, I guess we're stuck here until this storm lets up. I'll see you in the morning." So saying Rey departed the cockpit and stumbled for her bed. As she passed through the lounge she snuck a glance at the holoboard. The two droids were still at it again, two more pieces had disappeared from the board. She smiled and departed for her bed. In the morning she'll have to deal with the locals in figuring out how to navigate the mountain.

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A/N: I wasn't too impressed with The Last Jedi, especially with the bits featuring Rey and Luke. So I decided to write my own version. Thankfully, with the release of The Rise of Skywalker (as of December 2019), the franchise has been rescued from being the laughingstock of the decade and I can safely publish my alternate version of stuff. Mostly. I'm playing fast and loose with canon, and apart from following the overall story I've made my own alterations. This has been brewing in my head for a year now, and I threw this together a few days ago. Reviews are welcome.


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